What It's Like to Be an Activist When Your State Is Hostile to Reproductive Rights

Since 2011, reproductive rights activists from red states around the country have met up in Norman, Oklahoma, for the Take Root conference. There, they strategize about the movement's approach not only to abortion access but also to poverty, civil rights, marriage equality, and more. "Abortion services and other forms of reproductive health care are not isolated from social factors and histories that influence the access and discussion surrounding them," the organization explains on its website. At this year's conference, held February 20 and 21, attendance topped at over 550 advocates, allies, and organizers.

What is it like for activists trying to change a culture so hostile to the causes they care about?Cosmopolitian.com asked four women just that question.

Pamela, St. Louis, Missouri

I grew up in Missouri. I went away for college but came back to Missouri to be with family. I have an older brother who is autistic, and I knew growing up that I would have to take on a guardianship role with him, but I wanted to have fun in my 20s. I had a health crisis and emerged from it healthy, but realized I wanted to be close to my family and I wanted to do something more significant in my life.

I don't know if it's ever easy to be an activist, but I do think red-state work is important because we've gotten into this rut on the left of thinking that it's perfectly acceptable for there to be certain states where you can be super-liberal and have awesome civil rights, and that people who don't live in those states are somehow choosing to live in more oppressive environments. What we know in reality is that is not the way the world works. There are people who have families, who have commitments, who have roots and heritage and have an investment in their communities, and when you do red-state work, you're doing work for those folks.

My activism has really evolved in the last two years. It began as LGBT equality activism, and I've always had a core of disability activism because of my brother. Then because of my own life and work I did at women's shelters, I became increasingly active in reproductive health care and reproductive justice work because the women I was working with were kept captive by social policy. Over the last two years, I moved further into what I consider true reproductive justice work because atProgress Missouri, I get to work with all kinds of issues that affect the movement — labor, voting rights, environmental rights, payday lending, reproductive health care, and LGBT issues. It's very refreshing to work on multiple issues at one time.

The greatest hardship of trying to organize in a red state isn't the work — it's that people sometimes think your work is insignificant or that it doesn't matter from the outside. From the inside, we have to work to keep people motivated, and that's hard. There's not a lot of wins, and your wins might not be huge. You have to somehow get people excited and keep them enthusiastic from inside the state. But the hardest thing is that we don't get the [financial] support or the [national organizational] attention or the eyes of the world turned on us like they get turned on other states seen as more important to some sort of electoral map.

I'm a Missourian, and I'm proud of it. And I'm proud of the people I get to work with. The greatest joy I get is in knowing that the work I do every single day is going to build a community that I know will be powerful and empowering and safe for my family and for future generations.

Molly, Wichita, Kansas

I've been withSouth Wind Women's Center since it opened, which will be two years this April, and I've been with Trust Women [the group that runs the clinic] since 2011. I do this work because I'm from a red state and I grew up with such a love/hate relationship with where I grew up. It actually took me moving to a very blue state to appreciate that it shouldn't matter where you live to really understand that everyone should have access to reproductive health care.

I feel that we are steeped in reality here — it's not glamorous like it is in a blue state.

I tried to do activism in a blue state, and there was a two-week waiting period just to phone bank at Planned Parenthood [in Pennsylvania]. Here, we can't seem to find enough people to volunteer for us. There is a great group of people here in Oklahoma and in Kansas, but it is amazing that there would be this massive wait just to phone bank. I feel that we are steeped in reality here — it's not glamorous like it is in a blue state.

One of the hardest things to overcome here is our own assumptions about where people stand, because actually more people are with us than against us. You just don't see it because we have a terrible Legislature. Most people are for what we do, and when we knock on doors and talk to people, we hear that.

One of the greatest gifts that I have been given is that once I tell people where I work, I get to hear their abortion stories. People want to tell their stories — especially people who aren't rooted in activism and don't think about this every day — and there is no place safe for them to do so. I'm hearing everybody's abortion story, and that is a gift to me. And I think it's a gift to them too.

Melissa, Pharr, Texas

With South Texans for Reproductive Justice, our main actions are clinic escorting [in McAllen, Texas] and misoprostol knowledge shares [informational sessions on how misoprostol works if taken to induce a miscarriage]. There are a lot of people who are in a tough spot and need to know how to use the pill because they can't afford an abortion or can't get away to get one or don't want a partner to know about it. It's been very useful information to get out into the community, and people have been finding the information very helpful.

A lot of people heard "flea-market abortion" and everyone flocked to the [Rio Grande] Valley, when a lot of people had never heard of it before or even knew exactly where it was. Even in Texas, I would go up to Austin and say, "I'm from the Valley," and they would have no idea where that is. Now people know about it, but the picture they have in their head is just dirt roads and colonias and serious poverty because that is the only thing the media shows. They don't know that there are activists down here, and that, even though it is Catholic, people can change. It isn't only the poor, Catholic woman with five kids who can't access birth control.

This is my home. I was born here. There is a lot to be done in the Valley. There is also a lot that has been done, just in the last two years. There is improvement; it's just coming very slowly. With H.B. 2 [the 2013 omnibus anti-abortion bill], lots of young people have come out and gotten engaged. That has been really amazing. It never would have been heard of two or three years ago.

Lack of funding is one of the biggest roadblocks for activism in our area. The bigger cities get all of the grants and attention. Down here we are getting lots of attention, especially when H.B. 2 was being debated. Now it's waning. I'm sure we'll get attention if the clinic closes again, but it's really hard. We don't even have an abortion fund. People don't even know what an abortion fund is. Things like that — there are lots of things we would like to do, but we can't do because we don't have the funding for it.

The religious aspect can be hard too. It's a very conservative area. We just need to keep educating people. People are Catholic, but once they know what is going on, they can see the bigger picture, and then they are really supportive of women's choices. It's quiet, but people do talk about abortion and reproductive rights with family and friends.

I'd like to leave, but I feel like I'm tied here and I'm doing good things. It's hard. I just got another master's and there are jobs in other states that I'd like to pursue. I want to leave, but at the same time, I don't.

Coya, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I do my work based out of a place of as a queer, Native woman who grew up in a rural area. A lot of the work I do is about raising issues around the oppressions — not only those that my people face, but around all of the other intersections of my identity, as a queer person, as a young person, as a woman.

I grew up in South Dakota, which is one of the redder red states — super-red — and much of the work I do professionally is in red states, North Dakota and South Dakota. I feel it is important to constantly do my own political education. It's easy to ask people to teach you things, but you need to be seeking out to learn things, you need to be constantly vigilant about what is happening in places where you don't live, and it's hard. When you live in a blue state, like Minnesota, there is a certain level of comfort. I'm also a big believer that those who are suffering some of the most oppression are some of the most creative in finding the resolutions that they seek. There is a lot that you can learn from those doing the groundwork in the places where it is the hardest.

So many people come to red-state activism and say things like, "Well, why do you live here?" It's a really rude question, because obviously these are people's homes, and people have an investment in their homes. I think one of the things I appreciate most about folks who are in red states is their resilience, their ability to do this work in the face of such overwhelming circumstances. I think that takes a lot of bravery, and I think it takes a lot of heart.

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